The unexpected benefits of podcasting
This is the fifth article in the series of my 30-day writing challenge.
We originally started the Hacking UI podcast because we wanted to ask smart people how they managed their design teams. Sagi became a design manager and wanted to learn from the best, which is a very smart tactic by the way, and a great mindset to have.
In the beginning, the podcast was something we did on the side. We enjoyed it, but we never thought to much about what it could become.
Well, today we published our 17th episode of the podcast, and this time it was with the founder of Wordpress. Now 17 episodes is by no means a lot, and the most successful podcasts are well past their hundredth, if not already their thousandth episode. However, I’m feeling pretty damn good today about what we’ve already accomplished.
We’ve managed to bring on some incredible guests, and have some very real conversations. We’ve also managed to build a nice size audience that continues to grow by about 100% every month.
But more importantly, I’m having a blast podcasting. I never expected that I would enjoy it this much, or that there would be so many unexpected benefits from it.
The Benefits
1. Get to meet amazing, successful people
The podcast is the perfect intro to meet amazing and successful people. I’ve heard over and over again that I should reach out to successful people, find a mentor, yada yada yada. However, I’m not that comfortable with asking some random person who doesn’t know me to meet with me for coffee, or to give me advice.
The podcast forces me to do it though, since we record weekly episodes and need to find guests. However, asking someone to be on the podcast is completely different than asking them to just give me advice. I can actually give them some value in return. I can help them reach a new audience and share any message they have. Each guest is still doing us a huge favor and I’m extremely grateful that they make the time to speak with us. It’s just nice that it’s not a completely unidirectional relationship.
Moreover, these meetings are not just quick encounters. Each episode lasts for about an hour, and that doesn’t include some form of email exchange before and after. After each episode I feel that I’ve actually gotten to know the guest and that they’ve gotten to know me as well.
2. Started to dive into the world of audio editing
This has been really fun and a completely different kind of work than I’m used to. I’m a web developer, so I have a technical background. But there’s this whole other world of technical work related to audio and video, that I knew absolutely nothing about. I’ve only just started and I’m still very much a beginner, but I’ve really enjoyed getting my fingers dirty in a brand new field.
Editing audio is actually very therapeutic, and it relaxes me. It can be a little bit mindless, which I also like sometimes. I put on my headphones and just listen. The whole process is structured, and I know exactly what I need to do. Yet there’s still a sense of art or craft in it.
3. Made me not hate the sound of my own voice
I’m not sure exactly how this is beneficial or what will come of it, but something that I noticed, and I’ll share it anyway. I used to hate it when I heard my voice played back to me over a recording. However, listening to the interviews and hearing myself talk now, actually doesn’t sound so bad to me anymore. I can’t say if it’s because I’ve changed the way I speak or if I’ve just gotten used to the way I sound. Probably a combination of both.
4. Made me think about the way I speak
I now hear myself speak much more often than I used to. This has made me cut down on the “ums”, “likes” and other disfluencies. It’s also forced me to pay attention to weird idiosyncrasies I have and sound more in control of my thoughts. I still have a long way to go in this department, but I’m at least conscious of it now and working to improve.
5. Made me a better interviewer
Interviewing is easy, but interviewing well is very, very hard. One of the most important parts of interviewing is listening. I need to listen to the speaker and understand what they are really saying, or not saying for that matter, and prepare the next question accordingly. The podcast has made me a better interviewer, simply by practicing a lot, but it’s helped me become a better listener in general.
I still need to improve my interviewing dramatically though, and I get a little bit embarrassed after I listen to each episode when I see that I missed an obvious question or that I asked something in a long-worded and unclear way. Some interviews just flow better than others. We also simply connect better and vibe better with some people than others. I’d like to improve my skills and get better at it, so that I can do well even in the tougher interviews.
This is the fifth post in my 30-day writing challenge.
I decided to commit to writing a new blog post a day, for 30 consecutive days because I believe in the “commit first, carry out later” method of getting shit done. This is a method that I use repeatedly with Hacking UI to accomplish more than I ever could have imagined. I also teach this in The Side Project Accelerator.
